Resilience Through Appropriate Response: A Simulation Study of Disruptions and Response Strategies – Case COVID – 19 and the Grocery Supply Chain

This study performs a counterfactual analysis to identify the response actions that effectively enhanced resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Finnish grocery supply chains. We use system dynamics modeling to analyze the resilience enhancing impact of the response actions, adopted at the time, in two stylized and empirically grounded supply chains. The results indicate that flexible production capacity and increased information sharing should be prioritized for fast and slow supply chains, respectively. Furthermore, phantom ordering should be prevented through increased information sharing and transparency, and destocking should be avoided in rapid demand drop cases.